Faith and humanity at heart of London March for Palestine

'Who saves one life saves the world.'

Source: ICN exclusive

Saturday's 250,000-strong march in London demanding an end to the three years of genocide in Gaza and for justice and peace in the Holy Land featured some eloquent speeches. In addition to the Christian witness already reported, Dora Fidler, President of Jews For Palestinian Justice, delivered an impassioned address on behalf of the Jewish bloc which is here reproduced in full.

She said: "I am honoured to stand here today, representing the Jewish bloc: the UK's movement of Jews, committed to fighting alongside our comrades for the liberation of, and justice for, Palestine.

Most recently, members of our movement embarked on a campaign to end the sale of stolen Palestinian land in the UK. On the 14th of June this year, activists from Jewish Anti-Zionist Action, infiltrated the Great Israeli Real Estate event at Edgware United Synagogue where they found evidence that illegally occupied land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was being marketed and sold.

This evidence only reinforced what we already knew: that the Nakba never ended, only now it is being hidden under the guise of bureaucracy and normality, facilitated by shiny-eyed real estate agents. The keys to the houses they can never return to, burn hot and heavy in the pockets of Palestinians in refugee camps in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon and throughout the diaspora. Meanwhile new sets of keys to the latest Anglo neighbourhood in the north of Jerusalem or sea view apartments with large windows are offered to British citizens in the main halls of places like Edgware United Synagogue. A desecration of a holy site and a stain on the history of a religion rooted in a tradition of love and care for all, particularly the oppressed. And therefore, it is imperative that all such events are cancelled, the people complicit are prosecuted, and that the charity statuses of groups such as Toremet UK, the Jewish National Fund and Shivat Zion are revoked.

But we must also remind ourselves that all the properties being sold at the real estate fair beyond the green line or not, illegal or not, settlement or not, is stolen Palestinian land, whether from 1948, 1967 or 2026. Three years into the genocide it's far beyond the point where general acts of solidarity are enough, and that's why we're developing targeted and strategic actions and campaigns, such as this one. Campaigns where we are already seeing outcomes both legally and fiscally. Most notably with [Foreign Secretary] Ed Miliband's recent announcement of sanctions on settler goods imported from the West Bank into the UK, something we received with relief but with the full knowledge that it is not enough.

We in the Jewish bloc for Palestine know too well what happens when people look away from injustice and the oppression of others. Know too well what happens when people push their heads further into the sand in order to avoid disrupting their belief system, rather than stand up for those at the mercy of a genocidal state. And we know what the history books will have to say about those that look away now from the Gaza genocide. But it is not just history that guides us and our actions, not just the core tenets of our Judaism which guide us to fight for Palestinian liberation. It is simply our humanity. It is simply because it is the only option. That one child in Gaza was murdered was already too many.

That's why we demand:
Stop arming Israel!
Full sanctions now!
Free Palestine!

She was followed on the podium by the British actor Khalid Abdalla who said: "Genocides don't come out of nowhere. They are the result of decades of systematic dehumanisation Being told we're right is only important in so far as it signals the beginning of change in the political sphere, and that is significant and welcome.

"But the reason we are here is to stop the killing and work for a world in which a free Palestine means something tangible to the lives of Palestinians living under the brutality of Israeli occupation and apartheid.

"The status quo is not just the 1,460 people who have been killed in the last year. It is not just that two thirds of people in Gaza are living in tents, or the medical supplies are still not being led in It is that the culture around us is enabling the genocide and apartheid to continue, treating it as taboo to name the root cause: an ideology which is Zionism … the racism of an idea which at its simplest is about creating a state for Jewish people only on a land that requires the dispossession and murder of Palestinians for generations. Is there any other situation in which the supremacy of one religious group over another people would not be called out for what it is?

"So many great Jewish traditions and figures saw the colonial and racial injustice at the heart of Zionism right from the beginning in the 19th century, and their inheritors are with us here today, at the heart of this movement, as we just heard. [Here he nodded to Dora Litler and there was prolonged applause.] There would have been no Nakba just as there would have been no genocide, without the idea that it is somehow legitimate to push people out of their homeland because of a distant ancestral claim, or a proclaimed right to self-determination on a land in which, when the Balfour declaration was signed in 1917, over 90% of the people were Palestinian Arabs: Muslim, Christian and Jewish."

Referring to the recent motion that 'Zionism is Racism' voted on at the Green Party conference, Abdalla said, "If reckoning with a motion by the Green Party is more important to you than reckoning with the history of the Nakba all the way through to this genocide, then there is a hierarchy in your concern for human life that is putting the feelings of those who still believe in the legitimacy of Israel's origin story and the ideology that underpins it over the brutal reality of what it has meant for Palestinians, generation after generation, day-by-day, because to honour the holocaust is not to use it to justify the dispossession and murder of another people who matter less to you but to build a world of equal rights in which never again means never again for anyone and the Nakba is acknowledged as an ongoing crime. Don't let anyone ever tell you that what you do doesn't matter."

A newly married couple marked their special day by hailing the marchers as they crossed onto Westminster Bridge and had their photos taken with them. The London march (the 37th national demonstration in the past three years) was one of 250 pro-Palestine demonstrations across 60 countries around the world at the weekend.

Labour MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who was pictured alongside the couple as they raised their fists in solidarity with Palestine, said, "Three years ago when we had our first march, the then leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, threatened any Labour MP that would come on these marches. A number of us did.

"Now we have [Foreign Secretary] Ed Miliband telling us we were right. But words have to be followed by actions. Yes, we welcome the sanctions on the Israeli West Bank settlers, but we want to see Israel totally economically and politically isolated."

He called for the release from prison by the IDF of Palestinian medics and a 'friend of mine,' Fatema Rajwani, who has been in prison for two years 'because she sought to destroy the drones at Elbit Systems that were killing children.'

Andrea Egan, General Secretary of Unison, the UK's biggest trade union, said that it was "unacceptable that the British Government doesn't recognise the genocide in Gaza."

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Your Party, hailed the global movement for Palestine - not least all its 'Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist' adherents. And Dr Anas Altikriti, Secretary-General, Global Alliance for Palestine, said, "We are assembling across every continent under one clear mandate: to defend the land, end the genocide, halt military supply lines, and enforce universal international law."

As ever, the marchers excelled in the creation of some poignant, funny and searing home-made posters. Women from the Stitch Their Names Together' collective displayed their beautiful needlework which bore the names of all the victims of the genocide in the Palestinian colours of black, green, red and white. There was a large contingent of Holocaust Survivor Families and peace choirs.